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Death is the purest form of fairness there is in the world.
It comes for the highborn in their gilded sickbeds and the healthy on the battlefields. It takes babies from their cradles and rips crones from their loved ones’ arms. Even gods eventually receive its fateful embrace. It is truly egalitarian.
For that, it is a macabre disruption of justice whenever a murderer is punished for their actions. When news reached Zyanya in the Temple of the arrest of one of Father’s clerics she had pitied the Flaming Fists responsible for the arrest. They were such fools, but of course the patriars’ guard dogs would be the ones to do the people such a disservice. They were the true criminals, endeavoring to maintain peace, the invisible chain that binds people and smothers their souls.
But Zyanya had not stopped the cleric from getting the hangman’s noose around his neck. From the rooftops of Basilisk Gate she had watched him drop and swing from the gallows, had heard the music of his spine breaking. Father, even those who revile you pray to you. In prideful ignorance their heresy becomes sacrament.
Later, she had hunted down the Flaming Fists responsible. They owed a debt of blood to the Murder Lord for the lives they had saved.
One had died in a dark alley with a mugger’s knife lodged between his ribs. Another one’s heart stopped beating in his bed a tenday later. The last thing both of them had ever seen were amethyst eyes glowing in the shadows, but no one would ever know.
Tonight she finds the third one to Fraygo’s Flophouse in Wyrm’s Crossing, getting lost in his cups, quickly spending the pay earned with the cleric’s death. In this crowd he doesn’t look so respectable and righteous anymore – he is just another loud drunkard, singing rowdy songs with ale running down his chin, throwing his arms over the shoulders of other loud drunkards, his hands like paws clawing at the backsides of passing barmaids.
Zyanya is used to commanding an entire room’s attention, but tonight she is unremarkable, clad in plain traveling garbs and wearing her platinum hair up in a simple bun. The only thing she has concealed with makeup are her facial tattoos, a permanent souvenir of her Druid adolescence, the symmetrical straight lines over her forehead, nose and chin faded but still visible. She doesn’t look like someone who wants privacy, and for that reason everyone overlooks her.
She orders a drink for herself and waits. The Fist will have to step out eventually to empty his bladder off the edge of the bridge. All it will take then is one tiny push. Oops .
One hour passes. Then two. Zyanya watches her victim’s belly swell with ale and his pockets grow thin, and is beginning to contemplate simply setting the entire flophouse aflame and get it done with when the Fist at last makes an attempt to stand from his chair.
He almost topples over, naturally. Zyanya is in the process of going ‘to his aid’ when someone else suddenly sweeps in and steals her prize from under her nose.
“Here, handsome. We wouldn’t want you to shatter those pretty pearly teeth of yours on this filthy floor.”
The intruder is one to talk about teeth. Either he doesn’t bother hiding them or he’s doing a terrible job of it, but two razor-sharp fangs are peeking out through his beautiful, predatory smile.
The Fist is immediately enthralled. His gaze appraises the vampire spawn’s body with lascivious interest, and Zyanya chooses to let go of her plan for the very simple reason that her target is already dead. He just doesn’t know it yet.
The vampire spawn carries his dinner out of the flophouse. “I’m sure you can find another one for yourself, darling,” he says to Zyanya with a mocking grin as he walks past her. “But, just in case. For the trouble.”
He flips a coin at her and disappears with his prey. Zyanya catches it in the air with ease, but keeps her fist closed as she stares at the establishment’s door. Out of principle she always lets killers live, so they might spread her Father’s word and sacrament across the land, but… the vampire spawn owes an outstanding debt to Bhaal, having cheated death. Zyanya decides to let his own gold dictate his fate. Heads, he dies. Tails, he gets to keep unliving.
She opens her hand and looks at the verdict. Lucky bastard. Bhaal must have taken a liking to him.
She pays her tab with that same coin and returns to the Temple. The Fist, however, never makes it back home.
* * *
Zyanya isn’t entirely surprised when she meets the vampire spawn again. Predators make a habit of hunting, after all, and that is the one thing they both have in common.
They frequent similar haunts – grubby taverns with few respectable patrons, dark alleys where bad things are expected to happen, places where no one is surprised or alarmed whenever a disappearance or ten occur. It would not do to draw undue attention to themselves. Zyanya commits the occasional murder in the Upper City, of course, but always with meticulous care, and usually only when she’s well paid. The Temple doesn’t run on air, after all.
She never lets the vampire spawn see her. She observes him from the shadows, from tables in the farthest corner and from the rooftops of the Lower City, appraising his methods, which aren’t varied but are indeed efficient. Seduction and deception are his trusted weapons – Zyanya listens to him spin false tales, forging an alluring persona catered to each of his marks, and his face does the rest.
He is extraordinarily beautiful, with pale curls like spun moonlight, eyes like warm blood fresh from a slit artery, and fine aristocratic features like the remnants of a dream. In the many months since Zyanya first met him she has never seen anyone reject him. She catches herself wondering what might happen if he were to pick her out one night, were she to step into the light and paint a target on her back. What tales would the spawn spin to ensnare her in his web? She wouldn’t make it easy for him, of course. How embarrassing it would be, to seem even remotely similar to those airheaded fools who fall victims of his trap after only a couple pretty compliments. No, Zyanya would like to see him flustered when his usual tricks fail on her, and make him work for it. And afterwards… well, there is only one way it can end between them. She is murder incarnate, after all.
But she’s having too much fun watching him, and so she keeps herself out of sight for his sake.
She finds him one night in the Blushing Mermaid, several tendays after she last saw him. On that occasion she had found him in an alley, barely a few meters away from where she had gutted a man not five minutes earlier. It had been pure coincidence. The spawn had arrived with a beautiful maiden in tow, the innocent and sheltered sort who aches for a bit of rebellion and seeks it out in the arms of a handsome stranger, against her better judgement. The pair had been giggling and whispering, likely having just met at a nearby pub. The spawn had pressed the young woman against the alley’s wall and kissed her ravenously, eliciting moans of pleasure from deep in her throat, until he smelled the blood.
Discovering the mangled corpse hadn’t ruined the spawn’s chances at dinner. If anything it seemed to have improved them, for he had thrown his arms around the terrified woman and murmured soothing words in her ear. “There there, darling, that’s all right. I won’t let any harm come to you. Let’s go to my place, beautiful. You’ll be safe there.”
“You’re welcome,” Zyanya had said into the empty alley after the spawn walked away with his meal.
Tonight his prospective blood-sack is no blushing maid. It is a human man like most of the spawn’s victims, but something makes this man stand out amongst all the others.
He is one of Zyanya’s cultists.
Well. This is an interesting development.
Zyanya sits back and enjoys the show. She doesn’t feel the need to intervene on behalf of any of them – whichever one meets his gruesome end tonight deserves it, if only on account of not having studied his prospective victim well enough.
The Bhaalist never spots Zyanya. His name is Zen and he is fairly new to the Cult, having joined its ranks not a year ago, but he is already one of its most promising members. He makes a fresh kill –sometimes two– every tenday, always without alerting the Flaming Fist. He makes it look like accidents – a tumble down the stairs, a wild animal’s mauling near the wilderness, a drowning in a tub after a few too many cups of wine… Zyanya recalls he likes to collect souvenirs from all his victims, and wonders what he’ll try to collect from the spawn. If the choice were up to her, she’d take a lock of his beautiful hair.
Zen is the one who approaches the spawn first. This is not a rare occurrence – Zyanya has, on other occasions, observed the vampire quietly position himself like bait at the bar and wait for the catch. He has a type, accepting only the advances of attractive people and rejecting poxy, drunk wretches. He is not as discerning when it comes to personality, however. Zyanya has more often than not watched him leave with scoundrels. Having savored her own fair share of her victims’ blood herself, she can agree that a foul personality does not influence the flavor, while beauty makes it taste like a rare vintage red.
The spawn is receptive to Zen’s advances. Zyanya watches them drink and laugh and make stupid eyes at each other, both working their charms without realizing the danger they are facing.
She can’t deny it – she’s excited, like a giddy child getting to play her favorite game after a long while.
When the spawn realizes he doesn’t have to put any effort in luring his newest victim away, he wastes no time. He pays for both their drinks and whispers an invitation into Zen’s ear, nipping at his earlobe.
This is as far as Zyanya has ever witnessed the spawn’s conquests but, tonight, when he and her Bhaalist leave the tavern, she follows.
She keeps her distance, enough that they continue blind and deaf to her presence but she can easily figure out where they are headed. She supposes she shouldn’t be surprised to discover that the vampire’s lair is the huge, gaudy monstrosity that looms over Bloomridge Park, connected to the Lower City’s Central Wall. Of course a place like that is a vampire den. Of course .
Sneaking inside is child’s play. She takes advantage of one of the many times when one of the men shoves the other against a building’s wall to crush their mouths together and get their hands all over each other, and she wild shapes into a spider. It’s not her favorite form to her –too fragile, too risky– but it is practical at times, such as now. No one is none the wiser when she crawls up her Bhaalist’s trousers with eight long legs, and is comfortably carried inside the palace when the vampire spawn invites him in.
Once inside, the challenge is not to get crushed under the throes of both hunters’ passion. Zyanya avoids getting swept off by tangling limbs and manages to hang on until they make it to a bedroom, and then she leaps off Zen’s trousers and makes her way to the nearest wall, to continue being a silent spectator to what she assumes will be a short-lived and bloody spectacle.
She is wrong.
The vampire spawn does not immediately bare his fangs and sink them into Zen’s neck to suck the lifeblood out of him. He carries on as he has until now, kissing, exploring the Bhaalist’s body with sensuous touches, offering himself like a prize to be conquered. And Zen, seemingly in a playful mood, indulges in all the pleasure offered to him like a cat that plays with the mouse because it devours it. Murder can wait.
And wait it does. Both men are already naked and in bed when Zyanya begins to feel in the pit of her stomach that she has misinterpreted the situation. She hasn’t misread Zen’s intentions –no, it is clear enough that the man simply wants to get his cock wet first, before he goes in for the kill–, but the vampire’s. His countenance is radically different now that he is on his back, with the Bhaalist pounding away on top of him. He is… worlds away. His expression is blank, his eyes empty, and though Zen unsurprisingly turns out to not be a generous, kind lover, not a single word of protest slips past the spawn’s lips.
He is so much stronger than the human, he could easily overpower him and put an end to this, and yet… he doesn’t.
There is someone else watching.
Every nerve in Zyanya’s body flares up in warning when her subconscious becomes aware of the intruder, moments before she sees him. After that, he is easy to locate – there , in the wall opposite from the bed, red drapes are concealing the voyeur. Zyanya catches a glimpse of malicious red eyes and a cruel, vicious smile that… reminds her of Father.
She can see his face in dreams, and knows his dark delight whenever he sends the Urge her way, and she wakes up in the blood and gore of people she had not chosen to kill.
The vampire lord does not make his presence known until Zen has spent himself. The Bhaalist is too drunk with pleasure to react, and when he finally does it is too late. Zyanya doesn’t move a finger to stop him from getting dragged screaming down the hall.
The spawn later acts with mechanical mindlessness. He sits up on the bed, cleans himself as best he can with a cloth, and gets dressed. His gaze remains lost somewhere far, far away, where not as much can hurt him as in the real world.
His master returns some time later, Zen’s viscous blood dripping down his chin. The spawn doesn’t meet his gaze.
“Well done, child,” the vampire lord congratulates him. Zyanya finds his voice particularly grating. “Would you like to dine with me?”
The spawn takes a moment to respond. “Yes,” he says, his voice barely a thread.
“Speak up, boy! Have some respect.”
“Yes, master.”
The vampire lord hums his approval, but he does not take the spawn away to partake on the blood of his fresh catch. Instead, he produces a dead, putrid rat.
The spawns eyes are still empty when he takes the offered rotting vermin and bites down on it, famished.
* * *
Over the next few months Zyanya learns the spawn’s name. Astarion.
She thinks there’s a certain mote of irony to it. Her mother, Gisela, used to take her and her twin sister Tavanidhi to the cliffs at night to watch the stars and teach them to map the skies. “The stars are our guides and guardians,” she used to say. “Whenever you are lost you can always trust in them, if not in anyone or anything else, for they will never lie to you. They will always take you home.”
Where are your guardians, Little Star? Where is your map? Zyanya wonders while she watches Astarion roam the streets aimlessly from the rooftops of Baldur’s Gate. It’s empty and shrouded in darkness. It guides you nowhere. You have no home, no hope.
It’s impossible not to see the emptiness inside him now that she knows the truth of her situation. Every flashing grin, every laugh, every kiss and caress is tainted with the gaping void that eats at him from the inside. None of his marks notice it. They see only what he wants them to see, or what they themselves want to see in him: the beautiful, charming elf who can make their fantasies come true for a night, and who they should pay no other kind of consideration to.
But Zyanya sees the truth. She knows his pain intimately.
She could kill the vampire lord, the so-called Cazador Szarr. It would be a simple business; Zyanya would only have to march into the palace, perhaps with some of her cultists if she was not in the mood for a longer fight, and that particular hell would be over for Astarion.
There would be other hells, of course. There are always other hells lurking around every corner, but at least it would be of a different nature. The Cult of Bhaal would even benefit from the death of the vampire lord and the freedom of his spawn. Zyanya could arrange it so that the Flaming Fist became aware of the horrors that had been transpiring for years inside the palace. The Bhaalists could then wreak bloody havoc in the streets and blame it on the spawn on the loose. Orin would certainly be happy to be given free reign to paint the streets red, if only for a while.
But Zyanya doesn’t kill Cazador Szarr. She doesn’t set the spawn free, nor does she tell a single other soul about what is going on behind the palace’s walls. She could argue that it’s not her business, or that she’s been drilling the Cult too long about the need for discretion for her to suddenly cause such a stir in the city.
But no.
The truth is simpler, and far more selfish.
If she cannot be free, neither will the spawn be free.
In her fleeting moments of lucidity, whenever her hands aren’t stained red in bloody service to Bhaal, she becomes painfully aware that she is little more than a puppet with iron-hard strings. She does not resent it – she is what she is, a piece of a god made living, breathing flesh, with a destiny set in stone. How many mortals –and even many immortals– wander aimlessly through life begging for a sign, a tiny clue about what their purpose is? Zyanya is blessed; she has never needed to wonder, she just… is.
The spawn’s situation is no different, from a certain point of view. Zyanya is a weapon. Astarion is a slave. Such is the order of things.
Liar, a pernicious little voice mutters in the back of her mind while she watches Astarion from a rooftop, as has become routine over the past almost two years. It’s silly, but Zyanya could swear the voice sounds like her twin sister’s. You don’t care about order. You’re a petty, spiteful, vengeful little cunt.
“Perhaps,” Zyanya murmurs to herself, just as thunder rolls in the sky and drowns out the sound of her voice.
Several feet below, in the street, Astarion is in the company of his newest conquest. It’s another man, elven this time, and slightly older than the spawn appears to have been before he was turned. He has a sweet countenance, and perhaps tonight Astarion will know a caring touch when he lures his victim to bed for the sick pleasure of his master.
Zyanya now knows that means he will cry later. He cries hardest after the lovely ones.
She watches them run under the rain that suddenly begins to pour over the sleeping city, laughing as they do. Such a good actor. The thought occurs to her again that she could help him, if not by setting him free then by putting him out of his misery. Such a beautiful face would be the crown jewel of her trophies.
But Father looks down on mercy killings. They are a crude mockery of the divine sacrament of murder.
And so Zyanya, ever filially dutiful, lets the vampire spawn live and keep on suffering.
Besides, she is busy tonight. Under the pouring rain, she twirls a murder token between her fingers, paid for by an agent of the Zhentarim. The small coin is minted with Bhaal’s likeness, and has been dipped in Zyanya’s and the Zhentarim’s blood in a vile, unholy contract. It was fortuitous that Astarion picked a tavern in that particular neighborhood to hunt tonight, because Zyanya was able to watch him while waiting in the perfect spot to ambush the target whose name is written in blood on that coin.
She hears him coming down the street to her left, accompanied by two paltry bodyguards.
Zyanya pockets the token and gracefully jumps from the rooftop, knives in both her hands, ready to deliver Death to Enver Gortash.